Assignment #6: The Fate of Early Memories Mark L. Howe Chapters 1-5

The Fate of Early Memories 

Mark L. Howe

Chapters 1-5

Different Sensory perceptions develop throughout early infancy, even in utero. A sense of sound is found to develop in some key stages in the third trimester of infant development. Movements and increased heart-rates have been monitored in fetuses 25 weeks into there gestation period (4). Infants at the age of four months can distinguish their mother’s voices from that of an adult female stranger and have a preference for it. Amazingly, by six weeks infants can recognize a familiar nursery rhyme after just three days of hearing it (5). Infants also have well developed taste senses upon birth, tied in with the olfactory senses, they can smell and taste differences between foods. Also they can smell the difference between their mother and other people (6). While these senses are pretty well developed considering the age of the infant, the sense of sight is not highly developed. Despite the fact that some key factors are in place, such as the eyes and their structures, the neurological components are not on the same level. Within the first three months there is a rapid development of the necessary interconnections, and within the first year these become more fine-tuned (6). While early on (pre-3 months) there is poor visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and color vision by that post 3 month mark infants get to a point where they are even able to recognize faces (7).

While infants start to move their visual perceptions from the outside forms of objects to the inside patterns – they also begin to show expectation of events. Also an ability to hold attention and shift ones attention accordingly begins to develop when infants learn to crawl. They begin to sense depth and instead of taking things in pieces they are able to perceive them as a whole (8).  Through the development of the senses as well as some motor capabilities it is shown that even at infant stages, human are able to have the brain functions to create memories (9).

Studies were done in older humans with amnesia and with rhesus monkeys that had brain injuries to see how human memory capacity can grow and how it is affected by the changes in the brain. The problem with doing this and trying to compare it to how a growing memory can function within an infant is that the infants mind is still intact and unharmed, so it is difficult to compare the two (10,11). The ability of recall develops in infants between 6 months and 12 months. Though some other studies have suggested that 6 week old infants were able to imitate facial expressions after a 24 hour period, so there could be recall happening much earlier (12).  

So while early memories can be formed it is yet to really be seen if a majority can recall them later in life on a regular basis. While the definition of memory needs to be set, if it is the ability to recall in language an event, like an autobiographical memory, then memory can not happen until language is obtained. The author has asserted that observed behavior in response to events could be taken as memory (16).

There are masses of experiments used to try to determine memory at any given age. Many of them rely on the recollection of sequence events, recalled at different lengths of time, some with reiterations of sequences and some without. Many findings do not produce results that can be considered fact, as there seem to be many variables. For example, one had a mother read a certain story to her child in utero and when the child was born they seemed to show a preference toward the one they had been read while developing in the last trimester. This, however, cannot keep being tested as the book would be continually read and new memories could perhaps form.

Many advances in memory happen past infancy. Toddlers cannot remember things for a very lengthy amount of time, but once the stage occurs where they begin to think of themselves as a self then the memories become more able to recall as they become part of an autobiographical memory. Children’s recall also improves as they are able to have different strategies involved with thinking. Any gaps they may not remember they can fill in because they have the knowledge to figure out something they may not directly recall (36,37). Something that was also shown to affect memory of younger children was the presence of outside stimuli not pertinent to the information that was meant to be retained. Cognitive inhibition (the ability to shut out unnecessary information so that what is interesting to the person can be stored and later retrieved) develops in older children (40). Once this is developed, forgetting information becomes part of remembering as well (called directed forgetting). So the forgotten information is still there but you recall the important information (44).

A way that memories imprint themselves in through the distinctiveness of the experience had. The distinction helps make something memorable because it separates itself out from a category of other. For example, if you are given a list of animals but one things in the list is a piece of furniture than you would more likely remember that piece of furniture because it was different than the rest of the list (53). Though while the list might work better for adults something that helps children remember better is a shift in perception, so from black and white to color (53).

Memories formed after traumatic experiences do not necessarily mean that they will be remembered more clearly than mundane day-to-day events. In the statement “…memory, even for traumatic experiences, is reconstructive, is subject to suggestibility, and can involve the construction of false memories” (61), it is stated how all memories, even those that seems to effect our lives in a profound way, can be subject to change. Though is has to be said that traumatic memories, while they may not be able to be recalled accurately, could still be with the storage areas of the mind. High stress levels also create a release in the brain that can help or hinder memory; too much stress and the memory does not retain as well and is also actually said to inhibit the function of the mind to retain memories generally (68).

A memory is never an exact recall of what happened. The memory is imbued with the emotional ties, in construction and interpretation, as well as the person’s knowledge and beliefs. Information prior to an event can give a heightened sense of state, which can modify the memory. Also when emotional aspects of an event are surprising, they can help in remembering that event. Overall, regardless of the good or bad nature of an event, memories are most remembered due to their unique nature (78).

Learning about the early development of memories is interesting to me, while my work strives to work through memory; it is necessary to see how those memories could have been formed. It is also fascinating to see what sticks in memory and maybe what is not retained as well, or within that idea what is retained but not able to be recalled. The idea of stress impacting my ability to form memories is something I had not previously considered. Overall I like knowing the opinion of a researcher on how memories are formed, retained, stored, and brought back out in comparison to my first read, Tinkers, where there was a recollection of memory but not a real explanation as to their formation, and work that into how mine have been formed.